This game is based too much on luck: whether you find survivors or weapons, what skills those survivors have, whether HALF your search party dies on a "relatively well protected" excursion... boo. This is a really great concept, but you need to add more strategic control of the outcome. How about letting us GO on the search missions for example. Equipping survivors sounds good/easy to implement. How about letting us DESIGN our base and barricades - or building obstacles for the zombies.
 "Dead Zed"){kind=icon}